China's Trump Card

Chapter 1An Unconventional Trade Feud

1.1 Thanos and Trump

Beware readers, spoiler alert ahead.

“I thought by eliminating half of life, the other half would thrive … with the stones you've collected for me, create a new one teeming with life that knows not what it has lost but only what it has been given. A grateful universe…. I am inevitable.”

Thanos, Avengers: Endgame.

On June 20, 2018, I came across an interesting headline, “Avengers star Josh Brolin explains how Trump is similar to his ‘Infinity War’ villain Thanos,” on an online business magazine.¹ In his interview with Stephen Colbert, Brolin hilariously read Trump's tweet in Thanos's tone. The Hollywood star, whose character erased half of the galaxy's population to fulfill his own political belief, said Trump's public policies were akin to what Thanos did in the Marvel trilogy. His own planet, Titan, ran out of resources due to overpopulation. In response, Thanos thought the resource imbalance problem facing the universe could be addressed through massacring half of the creatures. He was addressing an economic problem. He tried to search for an equilibrium, and he called it “balance.” “When I'm done, half of humanity will still exist. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.”

What was Thanos's plan? The Avengers villain offered “a peaceful way” to finish people's lives painlessly and indiscriminately. He collected six Infinity Stones, snapped his fingers, and turned many superheroes into ashes—a very sad ending, ...